The present disclosure is generally directed towards antenna systems and subsystems for an electronic warfare (EW) repeater. EW countermeasure systems often rely upon re-radiation of incident energy coming from enemy or threat detection, guidance, and tracking systems to limit their respective effectiveness. Thus, adequate protection may require omnidirectional coverage in azimuth to address threats present from any incidence angle.
Prior art EW countermeasure systems include mechanically pointed antenna systems, phased array antenna systems, and systems including multiple distributed apertures; however, these conventional systems provide several shortcomings. For example, mechanically pointed antenna systems generally handle only one threat axis at a time. Phased array antenna systems must generally be switched on a pulse-by-pulse basis as these repeater antenna systems commonly consist of phased array antennas with switched, directive beams. To provide an omnidirectional azimuth coverage with this type of antenna system, multiple phased arrays are used, and each phased array covers a sector of the azimuth plane. Each phased array must then switch high gain beams throughout the respective scan planes to provide full coverage. For such a conventional system to handle multiple threats, the phased array antenna must be capable of generating multiple beams simultaneously.
While the aforementioned systems are useful in certain situations, there is a need in the art to provide a high-gain, dual-polarized repeater that enhances the performance of the associated EW system aimed at deceiving enemy detection, guidance, and tracking systems.
There is also a need in the art to provide advantages over phased array systems, systems utilizing mechanically pointed antenna systems, and/or systems including multiple distributed apertures by reducing the number of antenna elements and hence the complexity and cost of the system, eliminate beam scanning, eliminate beam switching, provide multiple threat jamming capabilities, provide antenna design flexibility, eliminate the need for direction finding, and provide a coverage area free of grating lobes thereby mitigating the potential for blind spots in coverage.